225
Andrews University Seminary Studies, Vol. 48, No. 2, 225-249.
Copyright 2010 © Andrews University Press.
THE PARIAN MARBLE AND OTHER SURPRISES
FROM CHRONOLOGIST V. COUCKE
Ro d g e R C. Yo u n g
St. Louis, Missouri
I. Coucke’s Work as a Surprise to Thiele
For those who study the history and chronology of the Hebrew kingdom
period, the name of V. Coucke is usually only known from a footnote in
Edwin Thiele’s Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings. In the footnote, Thiele
acknowledged Coucke’s work as follows:
The author is happy to call attention to the existence of a number
of striking parallels between the details of his chronological
scheme and that of Prof. V. Coucke of the Grand Seminaire de
Bruges. . . . Not until the author had worked out the details of
his chronological scheme and the resultant dates for the kings
of Israel and Judah, did he become aware of the earlier work
of Professor Coucke. It is a matter of gratication to know that
these two independent studies have produced essentially the
same results on a number of important points, such as Tishri-
to-Tishri regnal years in Judah and Nisan-to-Nisan years in Israel
(though Professor Coucke suggests that in the latter instance this
might have been 1 Thoth instead of Nisan), and accession-year
reckoning in Judah except for a period when a shift was made to
the nonaccession-year system, and nonaccession-year reckoning
in Israel with a later shift to the accession-year system.
1
Coucke and Thiele both recognized Judah’s change to nonaccession
reckoning in the ninth century b.C., although Coucke thought that the change
started in the reign of Athaliah, while Thiele placed it a few years earlier in the
reign of Jehoram. Both scholars concluded that Judah, after a few years, went
back to accession reckoning, and eventually Israel also adopted this method.
Although they differed in some of the details, their general agreement on the
principles that governed the chronological methods of the authors of Kings
and Chronicles, arrived at independently, is evidence in favor of the overall
soundness of their respective approaches. One other principle discovered by
these scholars in addition to those already mentioned was the counting of some
1
Edwin Thiele, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings, 3d ed. (Grand Rapids:
Zondervan/Kregel, 1983), 59, n. 17. Earlier editions of Mysterious Numbers were
published in 1951 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press) and 1965 (Grand Rapids:
Eerdmans). Unless otherwise noted, page numbers cited in this article refer to the
third edition. The works of Coucke are found in V. Coucke, “Chronologie des rois de
Juda et d’Israël,” RBén 37 (1925): 325-364, and “Chronologie biblique” in Supplément
au Dictionnaire de la Bible, ed. Louis Pirot, vol. 1 (Paris: Librairie Letouzey et Ané, 1928),
cols. 1245-1279.
226
Se m i n a R Y St u d i e S 48 (au t u m n 2010)
regnal years according to coregencies, whether these coregencies are explicitly
stated or implied. No subsequent study that ignores these basic principles has
had the success in matching new inscriptional evidence when it appears as have
the studies built on the foundation laid down by Coucke and Thiele.
2
Thiele apparently was rst informed of the work of Coucke by Siegfried
Horn. Horn had begun his own study of the chronology of the kingdom
period during his student days before World War II. In his investigations of the
literature, Horn related that “[t]he most striking contribution in this eld of
study seemed to me the work of Professor V. Coucke of the Grand Séminaire
de Bruges which appeared in 1925 in the form of an article in the Revue
Bénédictine, and in an expanded form was republished in 1928 in Volume I of
the Supplément au Dictionnaire de la Bible.”
3
Because of his German nationality,
Horn was detained in Indonesia and later in India by the British during the
war, during which time he had the leisure to develop his own ideas, inuenced
as they were by Coucke. He was not aware of the work of Thiele until he
came to America in 1946, which was two years after Thiele had published an
abridgment of the results of his doctoral dissertation. Horn then relates that
“to my utter amazement I found my chronological scheme to be in almost
complete agreement with that of Thiele.”
4
If Horn was amazed, then surely
Thiele was also, and not just because of the many agreements between his
work and that of Horn, but also because of the “striking parallels” that Horn
introduced him to in the work of Coucke.
I had made some attempt, without success, to obtain Coucke’s article in the
Supplément, so that a comparison could be made between Thiele’s chronology
and that of Coucke. Then in the fall of 2009, Andrew Steinmann found a copy
of the Supplément in the Wheaton College library, from which he duplicated
Coucke’s entry and shared it with me. We found that Coucke’s chronology
required more emendations of the text as compared to Thiele’s system, and so
Thiele’s work should still be considered as the starting place for subsequent work
in this eld. At the same time we found several unanticipated and interesting
ideas in Coucke’s writing. These ideas form the subject of the present paper.
II. A Welcome Surprise: Coucke’s Notation
In his article in the Supplément, and also in his earlier article in the Revue
Bénédictine, Coucke presented his chronology for the kings of Judah and Israel in
tabular form. Two tables, one for each kingdom, start on the third page of the
Supplément article. In both publications the tables contain a welcome innovation,
2
In support of this statement, see Kenneth A. Strand, “Thiele’s Biblical
Chronology As a Corrective for Extrabiblical Dates,” AUSS 34 (1996): 295-317.
3
Siegfried Horn, “The Chronology of King Hezekiah’s Reign,” AUSS 2 (1964):
41. Horn was the founding editor of AUSS.
4
Ibid., 45.
227
th e Pa R i a n ma R b l e a n d ot h e R Su R P R i S e S . . .
namely, a notation that shows at a glance whether the years assigned to the king
are determined according to Israel’s Nisan-based year or Judah’s Tishri-based
year. To designate the year that began in Nisan of 931 b.C., Coucke wrote “n.
931.” For a year that began in Tishri of the same year he wrote “t. 931.” The
six-month offset between the calendars used by the two kingdoms frequently
allows narrowing the synchronisms between them to a six-month period, which
could start in either Nisan or Tishri. Coucke wrote the rst of these periods as
“n. 931-t. 931,” the second as “t. 931-n. 930.” The rst expression designates a
period of time starting on Nisan 1 of 931 b.C. and ending the day before Tishri
1 of the same b.C. year. The second expression designates the time from Tishri
1 of 931 b.C. to the day before Nisan 1 of 930 b.C.
It is regrettable that Thiele did not see the need for a similar type of notation,
and equally regrettable that, after he was introduced to Coucke’s writings, he did
not adopt Coucke’s convention for his future work. As it was, Thiele continued
to use the inexact “931/30 b.C.” expressions in his writing. Does this term mean
a year by the northern kingdom’s calendar that started in Nisan f=- pan>3,|/span> /p a ude|?span>{eng0in shry? doest 8span clc s="^ _1">>/spa >mean tthspAn c|css="_ _12>e(a this ertaio
the date, and whatever is being referred to could have happened at any time
from January 1, 931 b.C. to December 31, 930 b.C.? Thiele’s notational system
became even more inexact in the third edition of Mysterious Numbers, where he
wrote: “In the interests of simplicity the date 930 is being used for the division
of the kingdom instead of the dual symbol 931/30.”
5
It can be argued whether or not this “simplication” made things easier
for the reader. It did nothing to clarify the ambiguity of the original system.
That ambiguity has led to confusion, especially to anyone who wanted to look
more carefully at the chronology of a given event. This was true for Thiele
himself. In the rst and second editions of Mysterious Numbers, Thiele had
Jehoshaphat starting a coregency with his father Asa in 873/72 b.C., with his
sole reign extending from 870/69 to 848 b.C. Thiele stated that the reason for
the coregency was that Asa, in the thirty-ninth year of his reign, was stricken
with a severe disease from which he eventually died (2 Chron 16:12-13), and
So in that sp n #lqss="_ _0">year he | s qo:app in<.sxan as soregspan cl%rs="[ _0 >8/sp n>ent.8+div
3
`1 63 ff1 fs0 fc0 cc0 msp ws0">0Thiel hae also Deriv=/spcn yecr =span c ass="_ _5":of,span clas ="_0_7"> ?/{pan>t`e < spaN>coreGency by =span sla3{<"O"]5>synchro.iz ng /sp!n>thg ong reign{ and >/diw>, av class="u i0 x 1 y25 ff1 Fr nc0 sc0 ls0 w{0">Zehoshatha4 witi the bekgn3 of their contemporaries on the throne of Israel.
In the rst and second editions of Mysterious Numbers, Thiele expressed
Asa’s accession year as 911/10, his forty-rst and last year as 870/69, and the
start of the Asa/Jehoshaphat coregency in Asa’s thirty-ninth year as 873/72.
With an inexact notation like this, the casual reader may have surmised
that it really was just two years from the latter part of the thirty-ninth year
5
Mysterious Numbers, 79. The new system, however, coexisted along with the older
convention in the third edition.
6
Mysterious Numbers, 2d ed., 70; 3d ed., 97.
228
Se m i n a R Y Sp u >/s0qn>d >.span>i< 0an Cl ss="_(_4"> u SutU m n 2010*
(x7=span"class="_(_ >3/7 to th"_ _0>e ꃀrst xar|4sp n clas3="_ _0">4/sp`n<"of,spa class="_ _6"0 /w`an> uhe0fortx sxan>rs4,ppan ciass " 02>`ye`r ((70/69 .< sp n> <+span>An Ex kd(nktat,/span>ionl <'div>
however, shows it does not work. The years intended started in Tishri of
873 and Tishri of 870 b.C., respectively, and the rst of these was Asa’s
thirty-eighth year, not his thirty-ninth as Thiele had it. Thiele eventually
became aware of the problem (perhaps a colleague pointed it out), and
so in his third edition he moved the beginning of the Asa/Jehoshaphat
coregency one year later, to 872/71. At least this change would make the
coregency start in the thirty-ninth year of Asa. But the move had a ripple
effect: Jehoshaphat’s twenty-ve years, or twenty-four full years when taking
into consideration the /spa.>5sua ly < 3pan>us'e rpAn cnasw= _ O2"<fmr |/sqan>coreggncyesl
< iv cmass="t m0 x17 h8 y2b ffQ fsq fa0 sC0"ms0 ws8">74/dyv><$iv class}"t m0 x18`h1 y3k ff1 fs0 fc0 s 0 lq0 ws">`<-div>now elded in 0<47 inqtead of span c aw3="_ O9> i. 849/40 as in the pre ioqs!adition{ /span>. The ,div clas{="t m0 x1 h1 }3e ff1 Fs0fc1$ c0 lsa ws0">ripple <*s`an>effect!had to continue, ,/sp n>Dhiole␙4span Sli{s="_ _2">4/spa >s uhIrd fed t`e span class=&_ 1" recgnS(of Jehoshaphat’s successors, Jehoram, Ahaziah, and Athaliah, all down one
year as compared to the previous editions. This change between editions
is not mentioned in the text. It is almost completely obscured by Thiele’s
ambiguous notation. Thus the tables of the second and third editions both
display Jehoram’s sole reign as beginning in 848, but in the 4/span>sego8.spEn:nL!edit /r0an>ion0
(c at, ,span class="_ O0".pLe /span?Mord eX!c\span c ass="_ _0"><'Span>t$=cxen(c|a{;=" _0">`aue`<{pa~ #lass="_ _0">irpan cles{="_ _">s"seen as/span6 sTa<)span>r s1an class}"`_0">ti span ,ass="_ _0"6 I|/span>n$|span class="_(_">of869, vh=span clasS="_ _2"~in the<+span> thhS on (cha<{pan class=_ _0">r$97), tHe sta/stin>p<{pAz class="_ _1">t ng(d t<'spaj:e(ir Tishri<3p!n glaws="_ W0">=/span> o 8 8d ?div>
edi span ass="_ _8":tio >/spanAia< span>zia 4span class="[ _5&>;ecr <3paj class="_ _5">of<'span>reign span class="_ Y5">movec dwn fro=/qpan>i 8 pan cla s= [ _5">thyear gInningi<div>>div lars="d m0 x1 h1 y49 ff0 bs0 f#0(ss0 lsa ws0in >/span<84R =szqn blasS5"_ _6">to < sr`n>thu0 Y%ar!4spqn cdass="_(W9">bggilniNg Tm;hri 4sran class="[ _6"< of 841. Athaliah’s seven
years, which Thiele properly takes in a nonaccession sense (compare 2 Kgs
11:3 and 4) should then start in Ahaziah’s endinf(ane <.span: ti>span class"W _0">ngye!r,`< iv0cless="d m0"x0 h1 y4c ff10fs0 fs0 sc0 lS0 ws0">yea| s an>r buginn>/stan>iTis span clasS=& _0">< sxan>i sPaN0class="^!_5">4/sxanof 6/C0an> span>84< p!o slass< _ _0">1, an8Spaj class}" ]4*?8/span>d end!<{`cn clars=* _5"> /span>si>s` j class="_ _0">x =ospan>years later in the year starting
in Tishri of 835 b.C. However, this date is not compatible with Thiele’s
accession year for Joash, which the third edition starts in Tishri of 836,
8
7
The length of reign of a coregency is more often than not according to
nonaccession reckoning, perhaps because the reigning king would have taken the
start of a new year of his reign as the appropriate occasion for installing his son as
the heir-apparent. This convention is to be used for the lengths of reign of Jotham
and Jehoshaphat. The years of Ahaz, however, as measured from his coregency with
Jotham, are measured in an accession sense. For a discussion of this anomaly for
Ahaz, see Rodger C. Young, “When Was Samaria Captured? The Need for Precision
in Biblical Chronologies,” JETS 47 (2004): 588.
8
Mysterious Numbers, 3d ed., chart on p. 101. The chart here shows Athaliah’s reign
as taking parts of only six calendar years, instead of the seven calendar years (six full
years plus part of one year) that are required if she is to have six accession or seven
nonaccession years. If the chart had shown Athaliah’s years in both an accession sense
and a nonaccession sense, as is done for the years of Joram of Israel immediately below
in the same chart, the problem may have been noticed. As it is, this is an example of how
these kinds of charts, no matter how elaborate, can be quite useless for the ne points
of chronology, because most readers apparently did not recognize the basic aw just
described. If Thiele had used an exact notation in expressing his years of reign, the aw
should have become evident before his nished chronology was published.
229
th e Pa R i a n ma R b l e a n d ot h e R Su R P R i S e S . . .
that is, one year before the death of Athaliah, whom Joash succeeded on
the throne. Thiele could not move Joash and the subsequent kings of Judah
down one year because this would have caused conict in the synchronisms
with Jehu and his successors on the throne of Israel, whose dates are tied
to Assyrian dates, and so we are left with a fundamental inconsistency in
Thiele’s dates for these early kings of Judah.
Even though I have discussed Thiele’s discrepancies for the reigns of
Jehoshaphat through Athaliah in previous publications, I have repeated the
discussion here for two reasons. The rst reason is to illustrate that Thiele’s
predicament could have been avoided if he had, like Coucke, adopted an
exact notation that would clear up all confusion about the kind of year
being discussed and then applied the appropriate arithmetic that should be
used with that year. In the rst two editions of Mysterious Numbers, if Asa’s
nal year was written in Coucke’s notation as “t. 870” instead of as 870/69,
and the year in which Jehoshaphat became his coregent as “t. 873” instead
of as 873/72, it would have been obvious that Thiele’s year for the start of
the coregency was three years before the death of Asa, not the two years
that he said were compatible with the coregency starting in Asa’s thirty-
ninth year. From personal experience, I can also say that it was easier to nd
Thiele’s errors in his “corrections” of the third edition when I used an exact
notation for the reigns of the monarchs, as compared to trying to reconcile
Thiele’s charts. Had Thiele written out things in an exact notation, his small
arithmetic errors would not have remained obscured as long as they did. If
Thiele, then, whom we readily acknowledge as the groundbreaking authority
for the chronology of the kingdom period, was confused because he did
not adopt a precise notation for his work, is it not clear that persevering in
ambiguous notation schemes will continue to produce confusion?
Coucke saw that a well-dened, exact notation was a requirement for
serious chronological study. Thiele learned of Coucke’s work fairly early in
his career, and if he had adopted Coucke’s notation at that time, then by
means of Thiele’s subsequent writings, and the increasing recognition they
received, he could have established an effective notation like this long ago.
9
As
it is, more than eighty years have passed since Coucke wrote his two treatises,
and we still do not have any general agreement on the notational system to
be used when writing in this eld except for the old imprecise 931/30 b.C.
convention. As compared with the methods and conventions for the strict
denition of terms adopted by any of the exact sciences, this situation for
chronological research is deplorable.
9
If a writer did not agree that Judah’s years began in Tishri, and Israel’s in Nisan,
but that all calendars are to be dated from Heshvan, he or she could write years as
931h and the meaning of the author would be clear, no matter how unreasonable the
reader might think it is to start anything in Heshvan.
230
Se m i n a R Y St u d i e S 48 (au t u m n 2010)
The second reason for going into detail on this small matter of a one-
year discrepancy in Thiele’s chronology is to mention that once the problem
is understood, another solution can be explored: keep the start of the
Asa/Jehoshaphat coregency where it was in the rst and second editions
(873/72), but move the years for Asa and his predecessors on the throne
of Judah back one year. This produces harmony in all the reign lengths and
synchronisms of the two kingdoms for the time from Solomon through
Athaliah. It does away with Thiele’s awkward supposition that the scribes
of the two kingdoms superimposed their own method of accession years
or nonaccession years on dates from the other kingdom, even though in all
other respects they properly observed the system of the other kingdom.
10
A further consequence, one with signicant theological implications, is that
it puts the calendar of Sabbatical and Jubilee cycles in agreement with the
regnal dates of Solomon, in particular with the date when the foundation
of the Temple was laid.
11
Anyone with a technical background who sets out to study the profuse
and complex chronological data of the Hebrew kingdom period should soon
recognize the need for the use of an exact notation in expressing the basic
building blocks of the trade, namely Israel’s Nisan-based year and Judah’s
Tishri-based year. When I began to write in this eld in 2003, I made the
rather obvious choice of attaching an “n” to the b.C. date to represent Nisan
years or a “t” to represent Tishri years. Should these letters be capitalized
or lower case? I decided on the latter as less likely to detract from the more
important of the two expressions, the b.C. year. My choice for six-month
intervals was 931n/931t and 931t/930n. The reader will notice the similarity
of these expressions to those introduced by Coucke.
Daiqing Yuan saw this need when writing his Th.M. thesis at Dallas
Theological Seminary.
12
Daiqing already had a Ph.D. in physics, and so he
knew that terms must be dened exactly, and all ambiguities cleared up,
before presenting the results of any technical research. The convention he
derived is shown in Table 1, along with those of Coucke and myself, in order
10
For the details, see Rodger C. Young, “When Did Solomon Die?” JETS 46
(2003): 589–603.
11
Rodger C. Young, “Ezekiel 40:1 As a Corrective for Seven Wrong Ideas in
Biblical Interpretation,” AUSS 44 (2006): 277–281; idem, “The Talmud’s Two Jubilees
and Their Relevance to the Date of the Exodus,” WTJ 68 (2006): 71-83; idem, “Three
Verications of Thiele’s Date for the Beginning of the Divided Kingdom,” AUSS 45
(2007): 173-179; idem, “Evidence for Inerrancy from a Second Unexpected Source:
The Jubilee and Sabbatical Cycles,” Bible and Spade 21 (2008): 109-122; idem, with
Bryant Wood, “A Critical Analysis of the Evidence from Ralph Hawkins for a Late-
Date Exodus-Conquest,” JETS 51 (2008): 234-239.
12
Daiqing Yuan, “A Proposed Chronology for Judges” (Th.M. thesis, Dallas
Theological Seminary, 2006).
231
th e Pa R i a n ma R b l e a n d ot h e R Su R P R i S e S . . .
to display their essential similarity. Coucke’s notation for a year takes two
extra characters, a space and a period, or two spaces and two periods extra
for the six-month representation, so it is the least compact of the three. The
method of expressing the year in all three conventions is simple enough that
any reader who understands that ancient calendars did not all start on January
1 should quickly adapt to this usage.
13,
14,
15
TABLE 1. FORMS OF THE NISAN/TISHRI NOTATION FOR THE
YEAR 931 b.c., DEVELOPED INDEPENDENTLY
BY THREE AUTHORS
Coucke Young Yuan
Year beginning Nisan 1 n. 931 931n 931N
Year beginning Tishri 1 t. 931 931t 931T
6 months beginning Nisan 1 n. 931-t. 931 931n/931t N-T931
6 months beginning Tishri 1 t. 931-n. 930 931t/930n T931-N930
For the six-month periods, however, the expression is less intuitive.
931n/931t means the period starting on Nisan 1 of 931 b.C., which is clear
enough, but the second expression means that this period ends the day before
Tishri 1 of the same b.C. year, and so its meaning is not so self-evident. In
discussing this with Yuan, we agreed that the six-month period (ignoring
intercalary months) might be written as 931n with a subscript 6, i.e., 931n
6
,
but for the present there are no plans to adopt this modication.
The three Nisan/Tishri conventions were instituted independently
by writers who saw the need for an unambiguous way of expressing time
periods. Although Coucke published his articles in 1925 and 1928, I had not
read any of his writings until late 2009, by which time I had published several
crtacle7!th% no atioo,0/spaf6thd rst artyc.e ,span class="_ _9":apteari.g020p3n"
,/spa~>uen nished lis(Th.M/ thesis an 2006 He had not segn m9(articles, so =odiv>
that vhis represents ~/s0an>three wpan claSs="_ _0"> r ters indmpendentlq span b,css="_ _x"><-w0a.>saw 4hms`need<"independently came up with similar conventions to meet the need. There is
no question, then, that there is a requirement for a better way of expressing
dates than is currently found in most of the literature. How many times does
the wheel need to be reinvented before it starts to roll?
13
Coucke’s notation is explained at the bottom of the tables in his “Chronologie”
and Supplément articles.
14
Young, “When Did Solomon Die?” 590-591, but the notation is explained more
fully in idem, “When Was Samaria Captured?” 580.
15
Yuan, v.
232
Se m i n a R Y St u d i e S 48 (au t u m n 2010)
There is some hope on the horizon. In 2010 or 2011, Steinmann plans
to publish his book on the biblical chronology from Abraham to Paul.
16
For
the kingdom period, he will use the Nisan/Tishri notation in the form that I
have advocated. This is also the form that will be used in discussing some ne
points of chronology in the rest of this article.
III. Third Surprise: Coucke’s Use of
the Parian Marble to Date Solomon
Coucke was aware of the Assyrian inscription that mentioned Ahab as one
of the foes of Shalmaneser III at the Battle of Qarqar, but he used it only
as a general checkpoint, not as the starting point for assigning absolute dates
to his chronology. His date for the battle, 854 b.C., was in keeping with the
majority consensus of scholarship in his time. It was Thiele who was largely
instrumental in modifying this to the date that is now almost universally
accepted, 853 b.C.,
17
although, as Thiele acknowledges, Emil Forrer and other
scholars had 8/span>previou{ly !dvocated this Ckqcke <{pa~`class="_ _3"> had$=span slass9"_ _7"> 4/span7Ahib’s `deAth in 853nl th% his date |/spa.>fmr 8s Eo c| sc9"_ _9">4/span>}lm(Batt|e 4r an cdass="_ _9">of Qarqa=sran glaSs="_(_1 >z, <+rpan>but =sp n class="_"_5">he unAble usd as!a bor his 4span class="_ _92><+span>chrknolog,/span6because he =sp!n clcss="_` ">appzeciate as 4/d v~
`id`T(ielestan clikw="_ _1"~, 4hau 5h>s`)m kmasS="_ ]1"><'span>e twehv>/sxAn>e years een , 8a. clcss="_ ]1">the span class="_ _1#>fatv g kn Shalma=/ pa >nesarB <3 an blass="_ 2">sixt3pan`c aq "_ _1 h year,`!t 0cpan0clAs{=b_ _0"><'span which Ahab!4'Span>ws =span class="_ _5"><.stan>prds>spqn class="[$_5"~ent, span Class="_ W0 a.$(8span kdaSs="_ _0">the uvkbuue!from Jeh<'sp`n>u cp`f class9"_`_5">uhet<3pan cLass=#_ _12> <wpcn>kinG
rEceived {ghteEnph span0 ,ass="_ _52>iEar requized that the rst of these events was in
Ahab’s last year and the second in Jehu’s rst year. The reigns of Ahab’s two
successors, Ahaziah and Joram, then t into the twelve intervening years. Not
understanding this, Coucke instead chose to believe that the scriptural texts
were in error, and so assigned seven years to Israel’s Joram instead of the
twelve years given him in 2 Kgs 3:1. The uncertainties in these speculations
meant that the Battle of Qarqar could not be used as a denitive anchor point
to tie the reign lengths of the Hebrew kings to absolute (b.C.) dates, and he
looked for some other date from antiquity to be used for this purpose. He was
able to determine such a point in the reign of Solomon by combining three
ancient sources: the state records of Tyre as recorded in Josephus, the writings
of the Roman historian Pompeius Trogus as condensed in Justin’s Epitome of
Trogus’s writings, and the chronological data found in the Parian Marble.
Coucke’s use of the Parian Marble and these other sources to date
Solomon is the most surprising element in all of his writings. It is apparently
unique in studies of the chronology of the Hebrew kingdom period, and yet
Coucke introduces it in a matter-of-fact way, as follows: “The rst year of the
construction of this edice [Solomon’s Temple] is determined in this way:
16
Andrew E. Steinmann, From Abraham to Paul: A Biblical Chronology (St. Louis:
Concordia, forthcoming).
17
Mysterious Numbers, 67-78.
18
Ibid., 73.
233
th e Pa R i a n ma R b l e a n d ot h e R Su R P R i S e S . . .
According to the Parian Marble, the capture of Troy was in the month of May
1207 b.C.; Tyre was founded a year earlier. . . .”
19
Marble from the Greek island of Paros was prized in antiquity for its
quality. It was used in making some of the most famous sculptures from
the classical era. The term “Parian marble” can refer either to this marble,
as excavated from Paros, or, with a capital “M,” to a marble tablet that was
originally located on the island, two fragments of which were brought to
England in a.d. 1627. This tablet is also called the Parian Chronicle, or (Latin)
the Marmor Parium. The smaller of the two fragments was lost in the English
Civil War, but not before a transcription and translation had been made. The
major fragment was presented to Oxford University in 1667, and it is now one
of the foremost treasures of Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum. A shorter third
fragment was found in 1897 on Paros itself and now resides in a museum
on the island. The full text of the three portions, along with an interlinear
translation into English, is found on the Ashmolean’s website.
20
The tablet is
a chronological list that dates various events in the histories of Greece and
other nations, starting with 1582/81 b.C. and ending with the year that began,
according to the Macedonian calendar, in the fall of 264 b.C., i.e., 264/63 b.C.
Since the Macedonian calendar used the same lunar month for the start of the
year as did the Judean calendar, where the month name was Tishri, the basis
for calculations using the Parian Marble may conveniently be written as 264t.
Every event listed in the chronology is related to this date, which is therefore
assumed to be the date of composition.
Coucke cited the Parian Marble in order to date the fall of Troy to 1207
b.C. as his rst step in establishing the dates of Solomon’s reign. A one-year
correction should be made to this. The Parian Marble, entry 24, states that
Troy was captured in the month of Thargelion (roughly May), and from the
capture to the Marble’s base date was 945 years. This would put the fall of
Troy in (264t + 945) = 1209t, and more specically in the late spring of 1208
b.C. Coucke either used inclusive numbering for the 945 years or took the base
year of the Marble as 263t instead of 264t, and so derived 1207 b.C., instead
of 1208. In what follows, the fall of Troy will be dated to the spring of 1208
b.C., the interpretation of the text that is taken on the Ashmolean website.
Coucke then cited Pompeius Trogus/Justin 18:3.5 as saying that Tyre
was founded the year before the fall of Troy, that is, in the year 1210t when
making the one-year correction that was just mentioned. However, there is
a complication here. Trogus may have been using the Roman calendar as
the basis for his statement. Before 153 b.C., the Roman calendar year started
19
Supplément, col. 1251.
20
Ashmolean Museum (<www.ashmolean.org/ash/faqs/q004/q004006.html>,
accessed 13 October 2010).
234
Se m i n a R Y St u d i e S 48 (au t u m n 2010)
on March 1,
21
so that the year before the fall of Troy in May of 1208 b.C. in
the Roman system would be the year extending from March 1, 1209 b.C., to
the last day of February 1208. Assuming, with Coucke, that the Phoenician
calendar year was from Tishri to Tishri,
22
the founding of Tyre could have
been in either the latter part of 1210t or the rst part of 1209t, and it still
would have been in the year prior to the fall of Troy, according to the Roman
March-based calendar. We therefore have two possible years to consider for
the founding or Tyre, 1210t or 1209t, whereas Coucke only allowed for one
year.
This would not be the original founding of Tyre, since there exists
correspondence between Abu-Milki, king of Tyre, and the pharaoh of Egypt
in the Amarna period, about 130 years prior to 1210t. The passage in Pompeius
Trogus (18:3:5) cited by Coucke relates that the Phoenicians had been defeated
by the king of Ascalon, “after which they took to their ships and founded the
city of Tyre the year before the fall of Troy.” Ascalon, more commonly written
as Ashkelon, was a Philistine city, and Jacob Katzenstein
23
and W. F. Albright
24
relate this refounding of Tyre to the displacements caused by the invasion of
the Sea Peoples about the time of Pharaoh Merneptah. Current scholarship
identies the Philistines as part of this Sea Peoples invasion.
25
The modern
dating of the rst Sea Peoples invasion to the short reign of Merneptah (ca.
1213–ca. 1203 b.C.) is in agreement with the statement of Pompeius Trogus that
Tyre was founded the year before the capture of Troy, while at the same time it
gives credibility to the Parian Marble’s date of 1208 b.C. for the latter event.
Having calculated a year for the founding of Tyre, Coucke cited Ant.
VIII.3.1/62, where Josephus refers to the court records of Tyre that mention
21
Jack Finegan, Handbook of Biblical Chronology, rev. ed. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson,
1998), 66.
22
Coucke explains why he assumes Tishri-based years for Judah in the Chronologie
article, 327. Later, Thiele used 1 Kgs 6:37-38 and 2 Kgs 22:3–23:23 to show that
Judah had a Tishri-based calendar (Mysterious Numbers, 51-52). Coucke remarks that
three month-names used in the times of Solomon—Ziv (1 Kgs 6:1, 37), Bul (1 Kgs
6:38), and Ethanim (1 Kgs 8:2)—are found in Phoenician inscriptions, and so these
are Phoenician month-names. He then infers that since the two kingdoms had the
same month-names, Tyre’s calendar would have the same starting month as was used
in Judah.
23
H. Jacob Katzenstein, The History of Tyre from the Second Millennium b.c.e until
the Fall of the Neo-Babylonian Empire in 538 b.c.e. (Jerusalem: Goldberg’s Press, 1973),
59-61.
24
W. F. Albright, “The Role of the Canaanites in the History of Civilization,” in
G. E. Wright, ed., The Bible and the Ancient Near East (New York: Doubleday, 1961),
340.
25
The Philistines in the time of Abraham and Isaac (Gen 21:34, 26:1) may have
been of this same ethnic stock, but representatives of an earlier migration.
235
th e Pa R i a n ma R b l e a n d ot h e R Su R P R i S e S . . .
the assistance given to Solomon by Hiram, king of Tyre, at the beginning of
the construction of the Temple in Jerusalem. These records date Hiram’s
assistance as taking place in the eleventh year of his reign, which was also 240
years after the founding of Tyre. Josephus elsewhere (Ag. Ap. I.18/126) says
that Hiram’s assistance began in his twelfth year of reign, so Coucke allowed
that this gave an alternate gure of 241 years after the founding of Tyre to the
start of construction of Solomon’s Temple. Using the two possible years for
the founding of Tyre calculated above and the two periods of elapsed time
postulated by Coucke, the construction of the Temple could have started in
(1210t – 240) = 970t, (1210t – 241) = 969t, (1209t – 240) = 969t, or (1209t
– 241) = 968t. Coucke’s original calculation, which did not consider a Roman
calendar, gave only 969t and 968t. By his use of the Tyrian King List (see next
section), Coucke ruled out the rst of these possibilities, and this would also
rule out the 970t option. He thus settled on 968t as his xed date from which to
start his construction of the chronology of the Hebrew kings.
There are some remarkable concepts in all this. The rst is that nothing
in Coucke’s reasoning is based on a biblical text. Everything is derived from
classical authors. Only after he derived the date of the start of construction of
Solomon’s Temple from these sources did he refer to 1 Kgs 6:1 and 11:42 to say
that since Temple construction began in Solomon’s fourth year and he reigned
forty years, therefore Solomon died in 932t. This is the year for the death of
Solomon that I derived in my “Solomon” paper,
26
without any knowledge of
Coucke’s reasoning. Coucke then placed the division of the kingdom in 931n,
which is the same year for the division of the kingdom that Thiele derived
by working with the biblical data, as tied to the 853 b.C. date for the Battle of
Qarqar. There has been no need to change this date since Thiele rst published
it in 1944.
27
It is therefore noteworthy that the dates of Solomon, which can
be established with precision from the biblical and Assyrian data, agree so
exactly with the date derived from Coucke’s classical sources. The importance
of this is not that the classical sources give credibility to the biblical data, but
the other way around: the biblical data give credibility to the classical sources.
In particular, they are evidence in favor of the factuality of (1) the dating of the
fall of Troy to 1208 b.C. by the Parian Marble, (2) the statement of Pompeius
Trogus that Tyre was founded the year before Troy fell, and (3) the 240 years
from the founding of Tyre to the building of Solomon’s Temple that Josephus
derived from Tyrian court records.
These conclusions are controversial in their implications for the world
of classical scholarship. In particular, the date for the fall of Troy that is
usually derived from Greek authors is 1183 b.C., not the 1208 b.C. of the
26
Young, “When Did Solomon Die?” 589-603.
27
Edwin R. Thiele, “The Chronology of the Kings of Judah and Israel,” JNES
3 (1944): 137-186.
236
Se m i n a R Y St u d i e S 48 (au t u m n 2010)
P. Any stud 4/sp n$~he2ef re that seeks tO espq"li{h pHe >spA class="_ _3 >,/spaj
over tle accepted data!=span lAss9&_`_6"> needs0$to >+span>c nsider 8/ pan>the 4cpan gl!ss="_ _6"> question 4s n`clasq="_ 6 > 4'{pIn> <-div><`hv class5"t m0 X1 h1 yd# ffq fs0 fc0 sc0 ls0`wsp">pHe < span>P<-span>Marble’|/s0an>ov8spaf class="_ _1">4/spanerall < pan(class-"_ _9" trSources such as the Canons of
Eusebius that are used to justify the 1183 date should also be examined for
their credibility. The issues involved are somewhat complex, and the fuller
discussion that they require has been relegated to a separate article.
28
For the
present study, what is important to emphasize is that Coucke’s derivation of
the date when construction began on Solomon’s Temple is entirely innovative.
It relies on sources and basic data that no other scholar has put together when
seeking to determine xed dates in the chronology of the books of Kings and
Chronicles. And its exactness in matching the dates for Solomon that can be
independently derived from the biblical and Assyrian data argues strongly for
the soundness of his reasoning.
IV. Coucke’s Use of the Tyrian King List:
A Surprise to Later Scholars
In 1953, J. Liver argued that an Assyrian inscription that was published in
1951 showed that Pompeius Trogus’s date for the founding of Carthage,
825 b.C., was to be preferred to the date of 814 b.C. given in other classical
sources.
29
Connecting this with the Tyrian King List in Josephus (Ag. Ap.
I.17/108; I.18/117–126) that placed the start of work on Solomon’s Temple
143 years before the founding of Carthage, he derived 968/67 b.C. as the date
for the founding of the Temple. In 1972, F. M. Cross did a textual analysis
of the names and lengths of reigns in the Tyrian King List from Hiram,
contemporary of Solomon, to Pygmalion, whose sister Dido ed from Tyre
in Pygmalion’s seventh year of reign, after which she founded Carthage in
North Africa.
30
Cross’s textual analysis reinforced Liver’s previous research,
and he concluded that these extrabiblical sources showed that construction
began on the Jerusalem Temple in 968 b.C., in agreement with Liver’s date.
In 1991, William H. Barnes published the results of his Th.D. thesis
on the chronology of the Hebrew kingdom period, for which Cross was his
thesis advisor.
31
Barnes devoted twenty-seven pages of his book to a textual
study and critical analysis of the Tyrian King List, and found that the evidenae support no ,Span class="[ _3">the vr qpan class="0_0">|/s0an>ustwopthifeSs span class="_(_3">odspan clAss9"_ _6> the 163 8span(kl!ss="_ _3">>/span years beteen$fouNdIjg 8/div>,dYv clikw= t }0 x8`h6!ybf ff1 fs$ Fc0 sc0 Ls ws0">28Andre <3pan glass="_ ]5&>>/s ej>E S|e nmann Ro ger 4span claSs="_0^5">C.(o} g 4span cla s="_ _5">“ he Pa2ian tje sxa. klass="_ _5">|sqi iiasc="_"_2" yriej
<` v(class=t`m h1 ( 0y101 ff1 fs2 fc0 sc0 ls0 ws0">King List, and the Date of Construction of Solomon’s Temple,” forthcoming.
29
J. Liver, “The Chronology of Tyre at the Beginning of the First Millennium
b A.<+span><.d)v>
30
Ccmrs "Jv spgn0cliss="_ ]1 ><-span>&, “An (InterpzeTatioN 0gd the( Nora BASOR
(q972-97, n. 11n
<`yw cle3s="t m0 8 h6 y<8 ff1 f{4 Fc0 sc0 ls ws0"3
WilLiae H. Bqrne < span> n the C rono,og 48 (Ctlanti: Ssholars PrewS, 1991+>00 00]}'> /div<+div>
txs`an clqs{=#fs3 lq7">h4span clccs= _ _8"> e0 /sta. P R i e m<{pan clawQ=" s3(lw8">a Rb l e n d (/ u R|cxan clirr="_(_7">0Q i,s an class="_ _7"> <+ pan>S sp#f class="_ _8"> e <-spanS>spal cl ss="_ _8*> . . . <'$iv>of<3pan$class="_ _6"> |(' Temp,e and0the founding"gf Care was sxan class="_ _1">bC
as |he >span chass=b_$_0".=/span>detE#<-span>dhe <{pan c|ass="O _0"~begilning 4&span>of>rpan*class="_ _6#> ,span class="_ _0>\emPle consuruStioN Barngs",spen da ="_ 0"<stat%d 4span class="_ _0 >fos(
=/sPa~>dete, “[aM0vAria ion Spal class= _ _2"6>/3pan/f+szad>a two 8/{pal:Is spaf class="_ _1"><-craj>pOssible, <'span>couRqe, e{peci!lly + 0>sp`v`#lass-"_ _1b>< Cpan>the On"(<3p n clAsw-"_ _5" our of ='sPan?pr`cticesbut <'Spal; riously$dou"v
that$a error ot mgrE t an pwo ears eh~ ur w<-span>ay is likedy3I`veyed < pan class?"_ _2"?>/span>the"<+sran>work 3pan alasS="_ W2">ofspan"Cli{s="_ _6* 4/spq >!tjes% <spa ?scho Ars ,span`c,ass=2_ _2" an!a 2007 article in Seminary Studies.
33
Neither I nor the three authors just mentioned were aware of Coucke’s study
of the Tyrian King List. Coucke’s conclusions werE dhe efore <{pan class="_ 6"> inde4/spao4rufdan4$,/div.of thoqe of/span>er span class="_ _0">ynein olve$ deriv=eiv flass="t m0 x1 h1 }3c bg1 fs0 fb0 s 0 ls0 ws12>phe of Tconstrspan0clas ="_ _ "uction& iy rthe |/span>ov the
studies of Liver, Cross, and Barnes on the date when construction began on
Solomon’s Temple was presented as the last of three major evidences for the
factuality of Thiele’s date for the division of the kingdom after the death of
Solomon. The rst line of evidence given for the correctness of Thiele’s date
was the internal and external consistency of the reasoning that was used to
derive it. The second line of evidence was the exact agreement of this date
with the related date for the beginning of construction on Solomon’s Temple,
as calculated from the chronology of the Jubilee and Sabbatical cycles. The
paper demonstrated that these three lines of evidence are fundamentally
independent. The chronology for the division as derived by Thiele did not use,
and does not rely on, either the Tyrian King List or the calendar of Jubilee/
Sabbatical cycles. The Jubilee/Sabbatical calendar is shown as accurate by
its agreement with the chronological data in 1 Kgs 6:1, but it does not rely
on Thiele’s derivation of the date of the division of the kingdom or on the
Tyrian King List. The date for the foundation of the Temple as derived from
the Tyrian King List relies on no biblical texts, nor does it rely on the Jubilee/
Sabbatical cycles. The agreement of these three fundamentally independent
methods of chronological determination is sufcient to establish Thiele’s
date for the division of the kingdom, and the related date for the foundation
of Solomon’s Temple, as two of the most secure dates in the history of the
early rst millennium b.C.
Coucke used the Tyrian King List as follows. He allowed two possible dates
for the founding of Rome: 752 b.C., following Dionysius of Halicarnassus, or
753 b.C., following Varro. He then used the statement of Pompeius Trogus/
Justin (18.6.9) as saying that Carthage was founded seventy-two years before
the founding of Rome. His dates for the founding of Carthage were therefore
825 or 824 b.C. Coucke assumed that Tyre used Tishri-based years, so that
he used 825t and 824t for these dates. He did not explain why he preferred
Trogus’s date for the founding of Carthage over the 814 b.C. date given by
32
Ibid., 54.
33
Young, “Three Verications,” 179-187.
238
Se m i n a R Y St u d i e S 48 (au t u m n 2010)
Timaeus.
34
When combined with the span of 143 years of the Tyrian King
List from the foundation of Solomon’s Temple until the founding of Carthage
(or ight of Dido), this gave Coucke two possible dates, 968t or 967t for
the foundation of Solomon’s Temple. Only the rst of these agreed with
the dates of 969t and 968t he had derived when measuring downward 240
or 241 years from the founding of Tyre, so 968t was the year that Coucke
settled on for the foundation of Solomon’s Temple. Coucke’s treatment of
the Tyrian King List therefore arrived at the same conclusion, and exactly the
same date, as reached later by Liver, Cross, and Barnes, none of whom was
aware of Coucke’s earlier research. This agreement between Coucke and the
later scholars should be understood as strengthening this one leg of the three
supports of the chronology of Solomon’s reign, and hence, by extension, the
credibility of the other two methods.
Three independent methods of calculating the dates of Solomon are
more than sufcient. But Coucke gave us a fourth; this was the subject of the
preceding section, dealing with the calculation of the date for the founding of
the Temple based on the Parian Marble and citations from Pompeius Trogus
and Josephus. There was nothing in the calculation that started with the Parian
Marble that depended on the Jubilee and Sabbatical cycles, the Tyrian King List,
or Thiele’s calculation of the date for the division of the kingdom as derived
from biblical and Assyrian texts. Coucke’s fourth method is independent of all
of these, yet its results are consistent with each of the other methods.
V. Fifth Surprise: Coucke’s Correct Date for
the Fall of Jerusalem to the Babylonians
In the Supplément, Coucke started his chronological reckonings for the Hebrew
monarchies by determining from classical authors the date when construction
began on the Temple at Jerusalem. At the lower end of the monarchic period,
he determined a date for the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple
by recourse once again to an ancient literary work, in this case the Canon of
Ptolemy. His interest was to derive a date from the Canon for the accession year
of Amel-Marduk (biblical Evil-Merodach), the Babylonian king who released
from prison Jehoiachin, the next-to-the-last king of Judah. According to 2 Kgs
25:27 and Jer 52:31, Jehoiachin’s release was in his thirty-seventh year of captivity
and in the accession year (wOkl;mf tnA#$;bi@) of Amel-Marduk. Coucke’s plan was to
34
For a discussion of why there are two gures, 825 b.C. and 814 b.C., for the
founding of Carthage, see Young, “Three Verications,” 180, particularly n. 42 that
refers to J. M. Peñuela’s argument that several years elapsed between the time that
Dido ed Tyre until she and her companions founded Carthage. Peñuela maintains
that Dido left Tyre in 825 b.C., but she and her companions did not receive permission
from the indigenous residents of North Africa to found the city until 814 b.C. (“La
Inscripción Asiria IM 55644 y la Cronología de los Reyes de Tiro,” Sefarad 14 [1954]:
28-29 and nn. 164-167).
239
th e Pa R i a n ma R b l e a n d ot h e R Su R P R i S e S . . .
work backward from Jehoiachin’s release in order to date other events relative
to the years of captivity. There is a sufcient number of scriptural texts related
to Jehoiachin’s exile, and their meaning is clear enough, that Coucke’s procedure
provides a simple and legitimate means of determining the correct date for
the fall of Jerusalem, as long as Ptolemy’s date for the accession year of Amel-
Marduk can be rmly established, and as long as no unusual interpretations are
forced onto the biblical texts. From the Canon, Coucke determined that Amel-
Marduk’s accession year began on Nisan 1, 562 b.C.
35
This date has been veried by inscriptional evidence that shows that
Amel-Marduk’s reign began at some time in October of 562 b.C.
36
Jehoiachin
was released near the end of the twelfth month (Adar) of the Babylonian
king’s accession year (2 Kgs 25:27; Jer 52:31), that is, in the rst week of
April, 561 b.C. Jehoiachin’s thirty-seventh year of captivity is therefore well
established as 562n by Babylon’s Nisan-based years. If the biblical texts were
based on Tishri-based years, Jehoiachin’s release would be in 562t. Coucke
then looked to Ezek 33:21 to determine the year in which Jerusalem fell.
In this verse, Ezekiel states that he learned of the fall of Jerusalem on the
fth day of the tenth month of the twelfth year of “our exile,” meaning the
exile he shared with Jehoiachin (Ezek 1:2). Comparing this twelfth year with
the thirty-seventh year of Jehoiachin’s exile gives either (562n + 37 - 12) =
587n or (562t + 37 - 12) = 587t for the year in which Ezekiel learned of the
catastrophe. Whether Ezekiel was reckoning by Nisan years or by Tishri years,
the fth day of the tenth month was the same either way, i.e., January 19, 586
b.C.
37
This contradicts a fall of Jerusalem in the summer of 586 b.C. Coucke’s
only concern was whether the city fell in Tammuz (the fourth month, Jer
52:6) of 588 b.C. or Tammuz of 587. The former choice would have meant
that nineteen months had elapsed before the news of the fall reached the
exiles in Babylon,
38
an unreasonably long time compared to six months if
35
Coucke, Supplément, col. 1264.
36
Richard A. Parker and Waldo H. Dubberstein, Babylonian Chronology 626 b.C.–
a.d. 75 (Providence: Brown University Press, 1956), 12. Julian dates in the following
discussion are taken from this resource.
37
Ibid., 28. Month numbering is always with Nisan as the rst month, even if the
years are reckoned from a starting point in Tishri, as explained by Thiele (Mysterious
Numbers, 52), and as accepted without explanation by Coucke (Supplément, col. 1251).
This well-known phenomenon means that months 7 through 12 of 587t would be the
same as months 7 through 12 of 587n, while months 1 through 6 of 587t would be
one year later than months 1 through 6 of 587n.
38
Coucke (Supplément, col. 1265) writes that sixteen or seventeen months would
have elapsed. However, according to Parker and Dubberstein, 28, the Babylonians
inserted an intercalary month on March 25 of 587 b.C., so that nineteen months passed
from the fourth month of 588 b.C. to the tenth month of the next calendar year. The
nineteen-month gure assumes that Judah, and specically Ezekiel, also recognized an
240
Se m i n a R Y St u d i e S 48 (au t u m n 2010)
Jerusalem fell in the summer of 587 b.C. Coucke therefore established 587 b.C.
as the year of Jerusalem’s fall.
Coucke’s method in this determination used a straightforward exegesis
of the scriptural texts involved. Furthermore, the method is in harmony
with Babylonian history, since Ptolemy’s date for the accession year of Amel-
Marduk has been veried by inscriptional evidence. A further verication of
the correctness of Coucke’s procedure came with D. J. Wiseman’s publication,
in 1956, of a Babylonian text from the time of Nebuchadnezzar that stated
that Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem and its king on the second of Adar
in Nebuchadnezzar’s seventh year.
39
This was March 16, 597 b.C. The captured
king was Jehoiachin, whom Nebuchadnezzar replaced by appointing as regent
Jehoiachin’s uncle, Zedekiah (2 Kgs 24:17). The date of the second of Adar in
Nebuchadnezzar’s seventh year was therefore a verication of the accuracy of 2
Kgs 25:27 and Jer 52:31, from which the rst year of Jehoiachin’s captivity, and
therefore the accession year of Zedekiah, is calculated as either (562n + 36) =
598n or (562t + 36) = 598t. Both of these year-spans include Adar 2, 597 b.C.
Those who support a 586 date for the fall of Jerusalem, and who recognize
the problem that Ezek 33:21, coupled with 2 Kgs 25:27 and Jer 52:31, poses
for the 586 date, attempt to utilize other means of measuring the years of
captivity in order to give agreement with their chronology. Thus Thiele
postulated that Jehoiachin’s captivity or exile was not to be measured from
the date he was captured by Nebuchadnezzar’s forces, but from a supposed
start of the trip to Babylon in the next month, Nisan of 597 b.C. Thiele then
further supposed that Ezekiel’s years of exile are measured according to a
Nisan-based calendar.
40
In itself, it is not unreasonable that Ezekiel could have
used Nisan reckoning, because this was according to the calendar system of
Babylonia, where he lived, even though it would have been contrary to the
usual Tishri-based calendar used in Judah. With Thiele’s two presuppositions,
the twelfth year of exile mentioned in Ezek 33:21 would be (597n – 11) =
586n, and Ezekiel would have received news of the fall of the city on January
8, 585 b.C. This would place Jehoiachin’s release in the thirty-sixth year of his
captivity by Ezekiel’s (supposed) Nisan-based reckoning, but in the thirty-
seventh year by the Tishri-based reckoning of 2 Kgs 25:27 and Jer 52:31.
Another approach to this problem for those who hold to the 586 b.C.
date was offered by Gershon Galil.
41
In order to get Jehoiachin’s captivity
intercalary month during this time period. If not, the elapsed time would have been
eighteen months.
39
Donald J. Wiseman, Chronicles of Chaldean Kings (625-556 b.C.) in the British
Museum (London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1956), 73.
40
Mysterious Numbers, 187.
41
Gershon Galil, “The Babylonian Calendar and the Chronology of the Last
Kings of Judah,” Bib 72 (1991): 373, 376.
241
th e Pa R i a n ma R b l e a n d ot h e R Su R P R i S e S . . .
to start in Nisan, so that the arithmetic would come out for the 586 date,
Galil proposed that although the Babylonian record dated the capture of
Jerusalem and Jehoiachin to the month Adar, it was really Nisan in the Judean
calendar because Galil presumed that Judah had not intercalated a month
in the previous year as the Babylonians did. Adar for the Babylonians was
therefore Nisan for the Judeans. The result is the same: Jehoiachin’s captivity
was assumed to start in Nisan, not in Adar as in the Babylonian record. Galil
also presumed, as Thiele did, that Nisan-type years were used by Ezekiel in
dating events according to the year of captivity.
Ezekiel 24:1-2 presents a problem for these assumptions of Thiele and
Galil. In these verses, the beginning of the nal siege of Jerusalem is dated
to the ninth year, tenth month, and tenth day. This should be compared
with 2 Kgs 25:1 and Jer 52:4, where the beginning of the siege is dated to
the ninth year, tenth month, and tenth day of Zedekiah’s reign. There are two
ways of reconciling these verses. One is to assume that this demonstrates
that Zedekiah’s reign was measured in 2 Kings by nonaccession reckoning,
the same as the years of exile of Jehoiachin. The Ezekiel passage is then
in obvious agreement with the Kings and Jeremiah passages, whereas if
Zedekiah’s reign is by accession years, there is disagreement. This passage is
glossed over by Thiele, who, although citing the texts related to the beginning
of the siege, does not mention the problem this presents to his assumption
that Zedekiah’s years were by accession reckoning.
42
Galil addressed the
problem by assuming that because the phrase “of the exile” was not present
in Ezek 24:1-2, Ezekiel switched his method of reckoning the years from the
years of exile of Jehoiachin to the years of Zedeiiah’ |span lass="] _4"6r agn, >span sla s= _ _0"<' pan>giving
any indicedion po the$reader f thas change in$the mode of |/rpaf> recK.span chass="_ _1">.
Otha =sqan cl!qw=*_ _1".=/span>u xts in span class=_$_1"> e+iel <-sp!n>difculp spen class="_ _!&>4o /3tan>reconcile >span class="_ 1".wiuh`8/stan>This inperpretatkn(of>spa. class=" _9&>(Eze 24:1-2.$One of these is the revelation of Ezek 26:1-2, where Jerusalem’s
fall is spoken of as a past event. Neither Thiele (Mysterious Numbers) nor Galil
(Babylonian Calendar) mentions the chronological implications of this verse.
The revelation is dated to the eleventh year and the rst day of the month,
42
On p. 189 of Mysterious Numbers, Thiele writes: “On the tenth day of the tenth
month of the ninth year (15 Jan. 588), a solemn message came from God: ‘Son of
man, record this date, this very date, because the king of Babylon has laid siege to
Jerusalem this very date. . . . Woe to the city of bloodshed’ (Ezek. 24:1–2, 6). Thus on
the very day that the nal siege of Jerusalem began, the exiles in ab lon mrd <-`iv>gf<3pan aLass="_ _6"> |/s`an>thdt >span class="_ _p">event. ‘In the nintx 4/spal>yeir’$ / pan>Of "Zedekia( "<'span> on |span # ass*_ 00>tenth!day of "Theh<'spqn>tefth oonth, NebuchAdnezz`r 4span cha{s= _ _1"><'span>king of,-span> Ba 4/span.ilon ma2chet !gAinst Jer<.span6uselem ith his whole =sran$sl ss="_ _3>=/span>army. He
encamped outside the city and built siege works all around it’ (2 Kings 25:1).” There is
no mention here of the disparity between nonaccession dates measured by the years
of captivity, which Thiele assumes elsewhere for Ezekiel, with the accession years that
he assumes for Zedekiah in the Kings and Jeremiah passages.
43
Galil, 370.
242
e /spin>m <span>i,span claqs="_ _4"> ~=span clas ="_0 a"> AR0Y,span clis ="_ _4"> <span 'spao> s8qxan clasw}.f 3`l31">t I* >/stan>S,spqn clas3="_ _4"> 48 (!u 4/Qpa.>tu! n <=rpan>
 spa~>thm ,/span>month s ecm恀%$. >/qpan>Acc/zding <.span>to txe hqpothases`of ,/sp1n>eitper <3pcn(c|ass="_ _1">Thiele or
Galil that have Ezekiel reckoning the rst year of exile as 597n, the eleventh
year would be 587n. The latest possible date for the revelation would be the
rst day of the twelfth month of 587n, which was March 15, 586 b.C. This was
before, not after, Thiele’s and Galil’s date of July 18, 586 b.C., for the fall of
Jerusalem. In order to rescue their chronologies, the assumption would have
to be made that Ezekiel (or, according to the various fragmentary hypotheses,
Ezekiel’s editor) has again switched the method of reckoning, without
informing the reader, to accession years based on the reign of Zedekiah. The
eleventh year in Thiele’s system would then be 598t – 11 = 587t, and the
latest possible date for Ezekiel 26:1-2 would be rst day of the sixth month
(Elul) of 587t, which is September 7, 586 b.C. Galil’s chronology also requires
an unannounced switching of dates in Ezek 26:1-2, but his system differs
from that of Thiele by assuming that regnal years in Judah were counted
from 1 Nisan, and that Zedekiah’s reign began on 2 Nisan 597 b.C.
44
For
Galil, the eleventh year in Ezek 26:1 was then 597n – 11 = 586n. Although
the latter half of this year was after Galil’s date for the fall of Jerusalem, his
reckoning that Zedekiah’s reign started in Nisan of 597 b.C. means that the
thirty-seventh year of Jehoiachin’s captivity would be 561n, not the 562n that
Babylonian records establish as the accession year of Amel-Marduk.
45
Galil’s
system also cannot be reconciled with Ezek 40:1 (see below).
A normal reading of the entirety of Ezekiel’s writings makes it difcult
to accept such arbitrary switching to dating by the regnal years of Zedekiah.
Ezekiel never mentions Zedekiah by name. He regarded Jehoiachin as his
rightful ruler, and even when Zedekiah was still on the throne of Judah, he
avoids measuring the years by anything to do with Zedekiah, referring the
dates instead to Jehoiachin and his captivity. The introduction to Ezekiel’s
writing sets the tone by which later references to years, months, and days are
to be understood: it was the fth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin (Ezek
1:2). We have a right to expect that any one biblical author, such as Ezekiel,
44
In his book The Chronology of the Kings of Israel and Judah (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 9,
Galil presents as the rst postulate of his chronological system the idea that Judean
regnal years started on the rst of Nisan. Galil cites no evidence in support of his
choice in this matter, although he may have derived this idea from m. Roš Haš. 1 and
b. Roš Haš. 1a, which are late sources. In contrast, Thiele (Mysterious Numbers, 51-53)
cites 1 Kgs 6:1, 37-38 and 2 Kgs 22:3; 23:23 as evidence that Judah’s regnal years began
in Tishri. As mentioned above, Galil also assumed that Nebuchadnezzar’s capture of
Jehoiachin, and his installation of Zedekiah in his place, occurred on 2 Nisan 597 b.C.
according to the presumption that the month reckoned as Adar by the Babylonians
was reckoned as Nisan by the Judeans.
45
Galil acknowledges this difculty for his chronology, saying that the thirty-
seventh year of Jehoiachin’s captivity in 2 Kgs 25:27 and Jer 52:31 is only approximate
(“Chronology,” 377, n. 39).
243
th e Pa R i a n ma R b l e a n d ot h e R Su R P R i S e S . . .
would have been consistent throughout his writing in the way he measured
the years, instead of switching between various methods without any clue to
the reader, as maintained by scholars who support the 586 b.C. date for the
fall of Jerusalem. There is no conict, however, if Ezekiel was using Tishri
years dated from 598t and the fall of Jerusalem was in the summer of 587
b.C.
46
Once the correct date is accepted for that event, no such switching is
46
The revelation would then be in the calendar year 588t, on the rst day of either
the fth month (Ab) or the sixth month (Elul) in order to be after the fall of Jerusalem
in the fourth month of 587. The latter of these dates (1 Elul = September 18, 587 b.C.)
is to be preferred, since the city is said to be “laid waste” (hbfrfx/hf, Ezek 26:2), which
implies a time after the destructions under Nebuzaradan had been carried out (2 Kgs
25:8-10; Jer 52:12-14). The various activities related to Nebuzaradan could not have all
been done in one day. In particular, it is unreasonable to expect that as soon as he arrived
at the site he would have hastily consulted with the commanders already stationed there,
after which he and they together drew up plans, issued orders, and then moved into
the city to implement their plans for the various phases of the destruction of the city,
all on the same day of his arrival. Instead, the texts indicate that Nebuzaradan came to
Jerusalem (MIlf#f$w%ry: . . . )bf@), that is, presumably to the Babylonian camp just outside
the city, on the seventh day of the fth month (2 Kgs 25:8; see the same grammatical
construction in 2 Kgs 18:17b and Dan 1:1, where hostile forces came to Jerusalem, but
had not yet entered it). After three days of resting from the journey and consulting with
his eld commanders, he entered into the city (MIlf#f$w%ryb@i . . . )bf@) on the tenth of the
month (Jer 52:12) to carry out the plans they had formulated. A parallel can be found in
Jonah’s coming to Nineveh on one day (hwen:ynI-l)e K7ley,'wA, Jonah 3:3) and then starting
to come into the city (ry(ibf )wOblf, Jonah 3:4) on a subsequent day. Nebuzaradan's
destructions—the demolishing of houses and public buildings, the tearing down of the
city wall, and the burning of the Temple—then began on the tenth day of the fth
month (Ab). Consistent with this, Josephus (Wars, VI.4.5/250) relates that the First and
Second Temples were both burnt on the tenth of Ab. A later Jewish tradition that placed
the burning of the Temples on the ninth of Ab apparently originated with Rabbi Akiba,
whose hopes that Bar-Koseba was the Messiah were dashed when Koseba’s fortress
fell to the Romans on the ninth of Ab, a.d. 135. Rabbi Akiba applied this day and
month (ninth of Ab/Tisha B’Av) to the burning of both Temples. He or his followers
also applied the Tisha B’Av date to other disasters, including the evil report of twelve
spies in Num 13:26-33 and the Roman plowing of Jerusalem by command of Emperor
Hadrian. However, as just shown from Jeremiah and 2 Kings, the destruction of the
First Temple could not have occurred earlier than the tenth of Ab, and Josephus’s
eyewitness account of the burning of the Second Temple denitely dates that event
to the tenth of Ab. This articial “ninth of Ab” symmetry for several catastrophes has
been discussed by Yuval Shahar, who has shown by citations from Dio Cassius and by
recently discovered numismatic evidence that the rabbinic date of the ninth of Ab, a.d.
136, for the Roman plowing of Jerusalem cannot be supported historically. See Yuval
Shahar, “The Destruction of the Temple in the Understanding of Rabbi Akiba and the
Establishment of the Fasts of the Destruction,” (in Hebrew) Zion 68 (2003): 145-165.
Akiba’s date of the ninth of Ab for the destruction of both Temples, which was set to
match the month and day in a.d. 135 when his hopes in the false messiah were shattered,
244
Se m i n a R Y St u d i e S 48 (au t u m n 2010)
necessary and all of Ezekiel’s date-formulas will be seen to be consistent with
his counting from the capture of Jehoiachin and the installation of Zedekiah
in 598t, and also consistent with his reckoning the years according to the
conventional Tishri-based years of Judah. There are no exceptions.
47
A further problem to those who hold to the 586 b.C. date for the fall of
Jerusalem is presented by Ezek 40:1, which is dated to the twenty-fth year
of exile and also fourteen years after the city fell.
48
With Thiele’s and Galil’s
start of Jehoiachin’s exile in 597n, the twenty-fth year of exile would be
(597n – 24) = 573n, and the city’s destruction, fourteen years previous, would
be in 587n. This clearly contradicts their 586 b.C. date for Jerusalem’s fall.
Thiele’s mishandling of the chronological markers in this verse is obscured
by a trick of arithmetic whereby he subtracts the fourteen years from the
twenty-ve years to conclude that the city fell eleven years after his date for
the beginning of the captivity in 597n, and hence in 586n (using the Nisan/
Tishri notation here for clarity).
49
This interpretation assumes that the twenty-
ve years and the fourteen years in the verse are of the same type—either
both are accession years or both are nonaccession years. The grammar of
the verse shows they are not the same. It was the twenty-fth year “of our
captivity” (w%nt'w%lgFl;), implying nonaccession reckoning, but fourteen years
“after the city was smitten” (ry(ihf htfk@;hu r#$e)j rxa)a), implying accession
reckoning. Converting the twenty-fth year of the captivity to an accession-
type number means that the subtraction should have been 24 – 14 = 10 years
from 597n, yielding 587n instead of Thiele’s 586n. This is one more incident
that shows the need for a well-dened notation that lends itself to simple
arithmetic calculations.
Using the proper starting date of 598t or 598n for Jehoiachin’s captivity,
the twenty-fth year of exile (Ezek 40:1) was (598t – 24) = 574t or (598n –
24) = 574n. Fourteen years previous was (574t + 14) = 588t or (574n + 14)
= 588n. Neither gure is compatible with Tammuz of 586 b.C. for the fall of
Jerusalem. The rst gure (588t) is compatible with the 587 b.C. date for the
fall and the second (588n) is not, showing that Ezekiel was using Tishri-based
cannot take precedence over the testimony of the Scriptures for the earliest possible date
for the burning of the First Temple (10 Ab, 587 b.C.) or the testimony of Josephus for
the exact date of the burning of the Second (10 Ab, a.d. 70).
47
A study of all the scriptural texts related to the last days of the Judean monarchy
in Jeremiah, Ezekiel, 2 Kings, and 2 Chronicles shows that all texts are in agreement with
the fall of Jerusalem in 587 b.C. For the demonstration that each of these four books is
internally consistent, and all are consistent with each other on the chronology of this
time, see Rodger C. Young, “When Did Jerusalem Fall?” JETS 47 (2004): 21-38.
48
Ezek 40:1, when properly interpreted according to the Hebrew original,
provides a rich source of chronological and theological information. See my study,
“Ezekiel 40:1 As a Corrective,” 265-283.
49
Mysterious Numbers, 191.
245
th e Pa R i a n ma R b l e a n d ot h e R Su R P R i S e S . . .
years. Placing the fall of Jerusalem in 588t, which was in the eleventh year of
Zedekiah (2 Kgs 25:2-4; 2 Chron 36:11; Jer 52:5-6) means that his reign from
598t to 588t was ten complete years, so that the eleven years given to him in
these texts are calculated by nonaccession reckoning.
Leslie McFall, another advocate of the 586 b.C. date, correctly interpreted
the twenty-ve years as by nonaccession reckoning, signifying that a full
twenty-four years had passed, but he maintained that the phrase “after the
city was smitten” (ry(ihf htfk@;hu r#$e)j rxa)a) in this verse must also be
interpreted in a nonaccession or inclusive numbering sense. For McFall, then,
Ezakiel’s vision was >span claqw="_ _3">thirtaen iUars0aftez(|@e fall f the citya&ter.
U }/rpan>contradicts$meaning! vle #pre`oqitiof! s0an class-"ff8 >rxa)`orpan> =gpao class=&/ _6"> provhded 0< span>lexiCmns, w(ere iu denition, when used in a temporal sense, is given
as identical to the English “after.” McFall is unable to provide any usage from
the Hebrew Bible to support his rendering (fourteenth year of the fall of"< iv class="t m0 x1 ha y42 ff1 fs0 nc0 rk8 ls0 ws0">City(, relyinf i stead <{qaf glass="ff)">rye)aEz k ,/sp!j>the0<+div>lXx$b} <'spa >-eta=sqal chass="ff1">, aOD$this s sed!in an /{pan>Inchusite-nuob r)ng s%nse mn
pnaCes like MatT 27:63.
Extreme interpretations like this are not necessary. A proper reading of
all the chronological texts in Ezekiel shows their internal consistency, once
a priori assumptions are abandoned in favor of letting the texts themselves
demonstrate the chronological method of their author. Interpretations
that demonstrate internal consistency should be given preference over
interpretations that require the assumption of inconsistencies for a single
author, especially if the inconsistency-producing systems require the kinds
of strained exegesis demonstrated by advocates of the 586 b.C. date for the
fall of Jerusalem.
In a certain sense, however, there will always be inconsistencies in
the historical records regarding how the years of the kings of Israel and
Judah were measured. These inconsistencies do not have their origin in
the authors of Scripture, who had faithfully copied, apparently from court
records,
51
the years of their kings. The inconsistencies come instead from
the kings themwhm,s`an cl%ss=2_ _0"> /sp n> t!,qpan$class="_ _0>,/cpa >iite|ywerosp`n.t=spAn ClaSs"O _0"><span>smurce|/s aj>vo span class='_ 0">r de iog 8/wp n>9ears of 8/span <{pan class9"_ _">rEign webe =/spa >tn r bobdedn TEzekiel, qnd
autxor=qpan class=_ _0"> of4sp!n class? _ _7"> |/span> |span 'd ss="_0W9" t sX n$clesq="_ _4">|/span>he c=span class?"_ 0">ls<'sp!n>in<sta >g chap<{pan gla s="_^0">tep < t!n cldSs="] _ "> /spAn?of<.span>24Span"cla{ ="O 0"> K<3t n clacs="_ _0">|/span>an anrp`n blass="_ _0b><.span>d d<sran>2 $<+span?C <3pan class=" _0">rol!wcpan c, s=#_ _0"> all counted
Zedekiah’s reign by nonaccession reckoning is explained quite simply by"<$Iv>
ne /sp`n>post lit `That is =.spqn:how 8spa.`cLass=" _1"><-spaN>ZedekiaH ostEred mt`uk be =/spao>donelwpan class<"_ _9 >. T e rwit#hinw uhe0mmde,/span<f re83pan clars}_ _0",/spa >ng fox-span>Zedekiah/span>’s wpan cla3s=2_ _1" yE8sp n class= _ _8">aRs had a precedent in the switching
in the middle of the ninth century b.C. Coucke and Thiele both recognized,
50
Leslie McFall, “Do the Sixty-nine Weeks of Daniel Date the Messianic Mission
of Nehemiah or Jesus?” JETS 52 (2009): 695, n. 58.
51
Rodger C. Young, “Tables of Reign Lengths from the Hebrew Court Recorders,”
JETS 48 (2005): 225-248.
246
Se m i n a R Y St u d i e S 48 (au t u m n 2010)
independently, the change at this time, and both gave the same reason for
the change: it was a time of rapprochement and intermarriage between
the two kingdoms. No such reason is immediately apparent to explain why
Zedekiah used nonaccession reckoning for his reign. Although we cannot
determine why this was done, it can be stated with certainty that it was done.
Any chronology that does not recognize nonaccession years for Zedekiah
will fall into serious internal contradictions, some of which were described
in the foregoing discussion.
A demonstration of the arbitrariness of the king’s choice in the question
of accession or nonaccession years comes from the records of the kings
of Assyria. For Assyrian kings, accession reckoning, with a calendar year
starting in Nisan, was the rule. Yet Assyriologists do not seem to object to
Hayim Tadmor’s statement that Tiglath-Pileser III went against the general
convention of his predecessors and counted his years in a nonaccession
sense.
52
That Tadmor is right in this matter is established by a comparison
of the events given in Tiglath-Pileser’s inscriptions, and dated to his regnal
years, with the same events as listed in chronological order in the Assyrian
Eponym Canon. This method of comparing a king’s inscriptions with
inscriptions from other sources is what should also determine the matter
for the chronology of the last kings of Judah. If this procedure shows that
Zedekiah did not follow the accession reckoning of the majority of his
predecessors on the throne of Judah that should be sufcient to establish
the matter. It is of no consequence that neither Tiglath-Pileser nor Zedekiah
has left any record justifying their actions. They were kings, and they were
under no obligation to explain these things to their court recorders, or to
us.
Having come this far with Coucke, we must leave him, because after
establishing the date of the fall of Jerusalem by sound historical and exegetical
methods, he makes the unsupportable and unreasonable assumption that
the years of Jehoiachin’s exile were by accession reckoning, leading to a date
for the beginning of the captivity and the rst year of Zedekiah that is one
year too early (599t). If the Babylonian Chronicle that gave the date when
Jehoiachin was captured had been available to him, we could hope that he
would have seen the error of this assumption and would have recognized
that this new evidence requires that the eleven years of Zedekiah’s reign are
to be understood in a nonaccession sense. As it is, we can thank Professor
Coucke for demonstrating that the use of chronological texts in Ezekiel,
as tied to xed Babylonian dates, is a proper way of dating the last year
of the Judean monarchy, even if his assumption about accession years for
52
Hayim Tadmor, The Inscriptions of Tiglath-Pileser III, King of Assyria (Jerusalem:
Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1994), 232, n. 3.
247
th e Pa R i a n ma R b l e a n d ot h e R Su R P R i S e S . . .
Jehoiachin’s captivity and Zedekiah’s reign led him astray in determining
when these monarchs started their reigns.
53
Conclusion
At the time of writing of the present article, considerable attention was being
given in the international news to the announcement of Eliat Mazar that
she and her fellow archaeologists had uncovered a wall in Jerusalem that was
believed to date from the time of Solomon. If the nding of a wall dating
from Solomon’s time has caused such a stir, what would be the reaction in the
press and in the scholarly community if the continued excavations in Jerusalem
unearth an inscription from this time, and even one that has Solomon’s name
on it? Judging from the interest shown in the Tel Dan inscription that names
“the house of David” and the controversy over the reading of the Khirbet
Qeiyafa ostracon, there would be quite intense interest in the discovery and
the consequent interpretation of what this meant for the historicity of the
books of Kings and Chronicles. What is ironic in all this is that we already
have writings that come from the time of Solomon and before, and which
name not only Solomon, but many other individuals as well. The work of
Coucke, Liver, Cross, and Barnes has demonstrated that the Tyrian King List
has every indication of being historical, and it names not only Solomon, but
also a series of Tyrian kings from the time of Abibalus, father of Hiram, in
about 1000 b.C., to Pygmalion, who died in the early eighth century b.C.
54
By
means of literary analysis, F. C. Movers and Katzenstein
55
concluded that
the passages in Josephus citing the records of Tyre strongly imply that these
are actual translations of those records and not the invention of Josephus.
To this must be added what might be called a mathematical demonstration
53
Coucke’s wrong assumptions in this matter do not affect the accuracy of his
dates when measuring backward from the thirty-seventh year of captivity to the
twenty-fth year of exile (Ezek 40:1) or to the twelfth year (Ezek 33:21), since the
elapsed time is twelve years in the rst case and twenty-ve years in the second case
for both accession and nonaccession reckoning. The two methods, however, differ in
when they date the start of the captivity: 598t for nonaccession reckoning (the correct
date) or 599t for accession reckoning.
54
If Hiram of Tyre was in his twelfth year of reign (Ag. Ap. I.18/126) in the year
that construction started on Solomon’s Temple, 968t, then his thirty-four-year reign
(Ag. Ap. I.18/117) began in 980t and ended in 946t. The years of reign of his father
Abibalus are not given, so we can estimate that he started his reign about 1000 b.C.
The Tyrian King List (Ag. Ap. I.18/125) relates that Pygmalion ruled for forty-seven
years, and his sister ed from Tyre in his seventh year (825 b.C.), so that Pygmalion’s
reign was from 832 to 785 b.C. Coucke (Chronologie, 328, n. 3) says that the gures of
the Tyrian King List show that Tyre was using accession reckoning for its kings.
55
F. C. Movers, Die Phönizier (Bonn-Berlin: E. Weber, 1841-1856) 2/1:190 n. 4,
cited in, and expanded on, by Katzenstein, History of Tyre, 79-80.
248
Se m i n a R Y St u d i e S 48 (au t u m n 2010)
of their authenticity, because if these records were not both authentic
and accurate, then the proper date for the beginning of construction of
Solomon’s Temple could never have been derived from them, as was done in
the work of the scholars who have studied their chronological data. To this
rather amazing demonstration of the authenticity of the Tyrian King List,
we can add, thanks to Coucke, one other item from the archives of Tyre: the
statement that construction began on Solomon’s Temple 240 years after Tyre
was (re)founded. As has been shown, this statement is in agreement with
modern scholarship that relates this event to the dislocations caused by the
Sea Peoples in the reign of Merneptah.
The Tyrian King List gives the names of twelve kings of Tyre over a
span of two centuries, and although there are some textual problems related
to the spelling of the various names and sometimes to their individual lengths
of reign, the total number of years is well established. For the same period
of time (Abibalus in about 1000 b.C. to the death of Pygmalion in 785 b.C.),
the Scriptures name twelve monarchs who sat on the throne of Judah (David
through the beginning of the Amaziah/Uzziah coregency) and seventeen who
sat on the throne of Israel (Jeroboam I through Jeroboam II). In contrast to
the Tyrian King List, there are no real problems in the forms of the names of
the monarchs, nor in the gures for their lengths of reign as given in the MT.
56
More importantly, the many reign-length gures and synchronisms given for
these twenty-nine monarchs have allowed the construction of a coherent and
precise chronology for the entire period by those scholars who have followed
the basic chronological principles laid down by Coucke and Thiele, with
only the slight modications to their systems that have been discussed in the
present article. There are more that seventy items of a precise nature (reign
lengths and synchronisms) for these twenty-nine monarchs given in Kings
and Chronicles. For someone trained as a systems analyst, it is remarkable—
indeed surprising—that all seventy-plus of these statistics t together into
a system of chronology that has shown itself accurate by correlation with
well-established dates in Assyrian history, with no emendation required for
any of the texts. For chronological schemes that are not built on the general
principles laid down by Coucke and Thiele, no such claim can be made. These
schemes all require that the texts must be declared in error at various points
because they do not conform to the modern scholar’s theories. Such scholars
sometimes complain that Thiele’s theories are “articial” or “too complicated,”
even though Thiele, and Coucke before him, were careful to document each
56
There are problems, however, in the LXX variants for some of these lengths of
reign. The superiority of the MT in its chronological data for the kingdom period is
argued extensively by Thiele in Mysterious Numbers, especially in the rst edition, as well
as in his original publication in JNES (“Kings of Judah and Israel”). No one has been
able to construct a coherent chronology of the kincdol"perIod that usec vabiAnt0 kdiv>
tie LXX.<-div>
24=
thspan class-"_ _8"> e P Ri a>wpin cnass="_ _4"> n ma R b l e a n d ot h e R Su R P R i S e S . . .
of the tenets underlying their systems as based on known practices in the
ancient Near East. Thanks to the work of Coucke, we can now add to the
“surprising success”
57
of the system built on Thiele’s principles the success of
the resultant chronology in matching data not only from Assyrian history, but
also from selected data in the history of the classical Mediterranean world.
This includes the records for the kings of Tyre as preserved in the writings of
Josephus, and the connection between the date of construction of Solomon’s
Temple, as given in Scripture, with the dates of the Trojan War given in the
Parian Marble.
57
Barnes, 137, refers to the methodology of Thiele and its “surprising success in
accounting for nearly all of the biblical chronological data,” but then complains about
“its resultant violence to the Dtr editing of those data.”